Post-Darwinist

This blog provides stories that Denyse O'Leary, a Toronto-based journalist, has found to be of interest, as she covers the growing intelligent design controversy. It supports her book By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg 2004). Does the universe - and do life forms - show evidence of intelligent design? If so, Carl Sagan was wrong and so is Richard Dawkins. Now what?

Enter your search termsSubmit search form

Custom Search

Friday, November 10, 2006

Darwin Loves You: and has a wonderful plan for your life?

A kind reader who makes assiduous notes sends me some quotations from George Levine's new book, Darwin Loves You, which offers bonbons such as the following to its readers:

For both Darwin and Daniel Dennett, natural selection is not literally an agent, but for both in effect it does the work of God. A demetaphorized (or remetaphorized) God emerges in the most hard-nosed contemporary advocates of the mindlessness of nature, and this ‘power ‘ becomes indispensable in rebuilding nature from scratch. (p. 59)

Whichever version of "natural selection" one takes, Darwin’s story of origins has become an inescapable alternative to "In the beginning… (p. 59)

In the face of the Weberian narrative of disenchantment, in which the absence of a "divine creator," of a teleology, expels meaning from the world and leaves it barren, such controlled forgetfulness is particularly important. (p. 69)

More simply, the possibility of a naturalistic enchantment emerges as crucial alternative to supernaturalist religion, which does so much harm when it imposes its norms on a secular polity. (p. 70)

Natural selection is a radically materialist reading of the world’s processes, and it would seem to require the greatest ingenuity to use it in support of religious views—yet, this too, has certainly been done. (p. 74)

He [Pinker], like naturalists of many stripes, but perhaps with a bit more aggression, wants to eliminate from our understanding of science, nature, and humanity any of the conventional assumptions about the god in the machine, about spirituality and nonnatural causes. (It’s important to recognize that virtually everyone involved in the debates on these issues except the creationists themselves is committed to secular explanation if not to aggressively secular visions of the world.) (p. 98)

The way the world works is scary, and Daniel Dennett too insists that the scariness has to be faced. Darwin’s ‘dangerous idea,’ he says, explodes many of the great moral ideas of humanity. His book on Darwin, then, ‘is for those who agree that the only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it” (20-21). (pg. 101)

Scientifically and ideologically, there is no escaping the battle over reductionism. Wilson, Dawkins, and Pinker—the most prominent (or widely published) figures in the public arguments for sociobiology and evolutionary psychology—all claim proudly to be reductionists… (p. 103)

[E.O. Wilson’s book] Consilience is important here in part because it is so clearly written with a moral and even spiritual goal. (p. 108)

[T]he ultimate enchantment, a self-conscious displacement of religion, is a vision—one can call it no less than visceral and passionate—of universal order, where Darwin’s laws are no longer "higgledy piggledy" but the expression of an ultimately unified and coherent world. Consilience is a book driven by rage for order. (p. 125)

I want to think of Darwin’s life not as saintly but as evidence for the possibilities of "nontheistic enchantment." (pp. 129-130)

A friend, Notre Dame graduate student James Barham, who sometimes notices this sort of thing, also writes me to say,

The book is superficial, and would not really be worth our notice, were it not for the fact that it can be used as Exhibit A for the claim that Darwinism has become a religion, or at the very least, a "comprehensive doctrine" in Rawls's sense, and hence something that a liberal democracy ought not to impose on its citizens by force.

Yes, exactly. As a traditionally religious person, I cannot believe the rubbish people write about that Victorian toff Darwin. It's almost as if they need a God but don't realize that the white beard is merely a fact of nature and does not confer, um, theism (Godhood?). If they don't need a God, they don't need one, but if they do, why make Darwin God? There are certainly better claimants out there.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

Amazon.dot.watchit!: Brazilian group monitors textbooks

One thing that has really inflated the intelligent design controversy has been random acts of Darwinism in taxpayer funded textbooks: historical distortions, slams at traditional philosophies, announcements that life has no meaning or purpose, gross inflation of the significance of various findings and inappropriate hagiography of Darwin... The main reason ID embryologist Jonathan Wells became so widely hated was his exposure of American textbooks.

In Brazil, an ID-friendly group has taken a proactive position, undertaking to analyze books and get corrections for subsequent editions before it all gets out of hand. Here, here, and here, in Portuguese, are some examples.

Enezio E. de Almeida Filho, who operates the blog Pos-darwinista, writes to say that in 2003 and 2005, his group sent a critical analysis of origin of life and evolution in seven major biology high school textbooks to the Brazilian Education Ministry group. This year, they are planning a critical analysis of all books (about 10) approved by the Brazilian Education Ministry specialists, which they will forward to the ministry.

According to Enezio, a very prominent author – José Mariano Amabis – a Ph. D. professor at USP (University of São Paulo – a Brazilian Ivy league university) has already removed two questionable items from his textbook ( Haeckel’s embryos and the Manchester moths ), though he did not give a reason. Other textbook authors are reportedly becoming more cautious and the Ministry has now appointed specialists to have a look at new books. A good idea, that.

Essentially, students must and should learn about Darwinian evolution - its strengths and weaknesses as an explanation for various features of life - but there is absolutely no justification for textbooks to read like the Holy Scriptures of Darwinism, complete with Darwinian miracle stories.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy att he University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

O’Leary’s comments on Francis Beckwith, a Dembski associate, being granted tenure at Baylor after a long struggle - even after helping in a small way to destroy the Baylor Bears' ancient glory - in the opinion of a hyper sportswriter.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment are rarely accepted. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudeby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.